Iron Mountain in peak condition

It has been a busy time, with many small deals announced in the international ICT market last week.

At home, there were several announcements, but none that were earth-shattering.

* Good year-end figures from Telemasters, with revenue up 14.4% and profit up 22.1%.
* A positive trading update from Cartrack Holdings.
* A negative trading update from Datatec.
* HeroTel acquired IGEN Wireless, a WISP.
* The Competition Commission has recommended the proposed merger between Dimension Data and Mauritius-based Hatch Investments be approved.
* The shares of M-FiTEC have been de-listed.
* The founders of Entersekt have raised a new round of funding with assistance from Silicon Valley-based co-investment vehicle Endeavor Catalyst.
* EvoNet, a new company formed out of the Crystal Web stable, and backed by well-known ICT industry veterans Shaun Kaplan and Brian Seligmann, will soon come to market. It promises high-speed fixed-wireless and fibre infrastructure at lower cost to areas not provided with these services today, both in cities and smaller towns. The company, which will be led by Kaplan as CEO and Seligmann as MD, will announce two new institutional investors, including a black economic empowerment partner, in the coming weeks. It will launch commercial services under the XtremeTTH brand soon thereafter in selected suburbs.
* A new stock exchange, A2X Markets, has made its debut, with three listings and four brokers on board.
* Renewed JSE cautionaries by Huge Group and MICROmega Holdings.
* The appointment of Ashley Tugendhaft as non-executive chairman of Alviva Holdings.
* The resignation of Arnold Fourie, non-executive chairman of Alviva Holdings.

* Sahara Game Technology (SGT) acquired John Power Kenya and rebranded its BetNSports Kenya under SGT's new brand, SaharaGames.com. The deal is in line with its Africa expansion strategy.
* Tigo, Airtel, Halotel, Maxcom Africa, TTCL and Smart, which have applied to sell shares on the Tanzanian bourse through initial public offerings, have had the applications rejected twice for failing to fulfil certain requirements for listing.
* The appointments of Ernest Akinlola, a former Virgin Mobile EE and Lycamobile executive, as CEO of Ntel; Ebenezer Asante as VP for MTN's Southern and East Africa region, which now also includes Ghana; Riaan de Leeuw as VP of Schneider Electric's IT division in the Anglophone Africa region; and Sydney Mupeta as CEO of Zamtel.

The EU has ordered Amazon to pay EUR250 million in back taxes.

* ADP acquired Global Cash Card, a leader in digital payments, including pay cards and other electronic accounts.
* Amazon bought Body Labs, a start-up that focuses on creating 3D models that accurately mimic the body of a person who is scanned.
* Atos purchased Pursuit Healthcare Advisors, Conduent's Healthcare Provider Consulting business and Conduent's Breakaway Group business, three healthcare consulting companies in the US.
* Dialog Semiconductor acquired Silego Technology for $306 million, in a move designed to help strengthen its position in the Internet of things market.
* Electronics for Imaging bought Escada Systems, a leading provider of Corrugator Control systems for the packaging market.
* Extreme Networks purchased Brocade Communications Systems' Switching, Routing and Analytics data centre business.
* GTT Communications acquired Transbeam, a provider of managed data and voice services, for $28 million.
* Iron Mountain bought the Bonded Services Group, provider of media asset management services for global entertainment and media companies, for £57 million.
* Iron Mountain also purchased two Credit Suisse data centres in London and Singapore, which will expand its data centre business internationally. The deal was worth $100 million.
* KPN acquired QSight IT, the managed security services and public cloud consultancy provider, based in The Netherlands.
* Itelligence India Software Solutions, a SAP solutions provider, bought vCentric Technologies (India).
* Kyocera purchased the majority of shares of a firm to be established from the company split of Ryobi's power tool business.
* Microsoft acquired social virtual reality application provider AltspaceVR.
* Wipro Digital bought Cooper, an award-winning design and business strategy consultancy, for $8.5 million.
* Worldline, a European payment services company, purchased MRL PosNet (India), a technology-led, integrated merchant acquiring solutions provider, in a move designed to strengthen its operations in India. The deal was worth EUR89 million.
* The European Commission is taking Ireland to the European Court of Justice for its failure to recover up to EUR13 billion of tax due from Apple.
* Tech Mahindra has become the second company to sue Reliance Communications in the Indian bankruptcy court.
* Bain Capital intends to list Toshiba's chip unit in three years.
* The EU has ordered Amazon to pay EUR250 million in back taxes.
* Telia Company has cut its holding in Russia's MegaFon from 25.2% to 19.2%, raising the equivalent of $388 million. The move, just two weeks after Telia cut its holding in Turkcell, follows the Swedish group's policy to focus on Scandinavia and the Baltic states and sell off investments further away.
* As a result of the merger of Oberthur Technologies (OT) and Safran Identity & Security (Morpho), the OT-Morpho group has changed its name to IDEMIA.
* Reliance Communications has called off the merger of its wireless services business with Aircel, citing regulatory delays and opposition from some creditors, in a development that will further impede its efforts to pare its huge debt.
* Satisfactory quarterly results from Paychex.
* The appointments of John Kodera appointed president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment; Mark Liu as chairman of TSMC (as of June 2018); and Stephen Murphy as CEO of Epicor.
* The resignation of Sony Interactive Entertainment's Andrew House (stays on as chairman).
* The retirements of Morris Chang, chairman of TMSC (as of June 2018); and Joe Cowan, CEO of Epicor.
* The death of Paul Otellini, a former CEO of Intel.
* A good IPO by Fatfish Internet Group-backed Singapore IT solutions company Cloudaron Group on Bursa Malaysia's new Leading Entrepreneur Accelerator Platform market.
* A very good IPO on the NYSE by Switch, a data centre company; the second largest 2017 tech listing in the US.

EMEA/Africa:
* The Egyptian personal computing devices market, which comprises desktops, notebooks, workstations and tablets, experienced a huge year-on-year decline of 55.3% in Q217, according to IDC. The market totalled 165 000 units in Q217, down from 370 000 units in Q216.
* The MEA enterprise infrastructure hardware market, which includes servers and external storage, suffered a year-on-year decline of 8% in the first half of 2017 to total $1.1 billion, according to IDC.

Worldwide:
* The production value of the global foundry industry is expected to grow by a CAGR of 6% to reach $74.66 billion in 2022, according to Digitimes Research. This is the final year of a five-year forecast period, driven by the still growing - albeit at a slower pace - smartphone industry, an increase in the number of ICs used in each smartphone, and rising demand for advanced processes.
* Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.3% from 2017 estimated spending of $3.5 trillion, according to Gartner.
* The worldwide SDS market will see a compound annual growth rate of 13.5% over the 2017-2021 forecast period, with revenue of nearly $16.2 billion in 2021, according to IDC.
* Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew 25.8% year-on-year in 2Q17, reaching $12.3 billion, according to IDC.

* JSE All share index: Up 3% (highest weekend close)
* FTSE100: Up 2%
* DAX: Up 1% (highest weekend close)
* NYSE (Dow): Up 1.6% (highest weekend close)
* S&P 500: Up 1.2% (highest weekend close)
* Nasdaq: Up 1.5% (highest weekend close)
* Nikkei225: Up 1.6% (highest 2017 weekend close)
* Hang Seng: Up 3.3% (highest weekend close for 10 years)
* Shanghai: no change

International:
* The battle for Southeast Asia's coveted e-commerce market intensifying, with Chinese giants Alibaba Group and rival JD.com now scrambling to gain control of the second largest e-commerce player in Malaysia, 11street, a partnership between Celcom Axiata and Korea's SK Planet.
* Reliance Communications offering 100% of its tower company for sale after the collapse of the planned Aircel merger.

South Africa:
* Further developments regarding government's broadband plans.

Fortune magazine has published its 2017 list of the '50 most powerful women'. In the list, from a technology perspective, are:

* 6: Chua Sock Koong, group CEO, Singapore Telecommunications
* 7: Sun Yafang, chairman, Huawei Technologies
* 12: Isabel Ge Mahe, VP and MD, Greater China, Apple
* 14: Li Dang, president, China General Technology
* 15: Maggie Wei Wu, CFO, Alibaba
* 25: Jean Liu, president, Didi Chuxing
* 27: Serpil Timuray, chief commercial and strategy officer, Vodafone
* 31: Adaire Martin-Fox, co-president, Global Customer Operations at SAP
* 49: Zhou Qunfei, CEO and founder, Lens Technology